Yet my ego pushed my body to perform. Hike the fastest, work the hardest. It had not to do with my crewmates but a ballooning perspective of my own standards. Still, the wild took everything I could give. It handed me my limits on the cold metal of an ax. It took my one hundred percent and cracked it, as easily as a sledge to fissuring backfill. I became more tired and unsure than I ever thought I could be. I constantly wavered between these two truths, through hitches, days and hours. Looking past this, however, I found in myself an anvil of strength. Resting heavily behind my sternum, where I think a soul would be. In the belly of a hike, whether from worksite to worksite or camp to trailhead, I would simply let the minutes pass by. Let my feet take one more step. In the thick heat of a project, I would swing my pick again. It was never a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’. A circumstance would not appear that I would die before my destination. I was and still am just a bear hunting my next meal. Just a leaf taking sun through a smoky sky. Just a rock in the middle of the trail, kicked to a ravine where I begin to erode, ever so slowly.